Fished it for the 1st time this year. What a Joke. Got there Saturday morning. Shoulder to Shoulder. Rigs everywhere. Boats everywhere. Get a spot and see someone I know release a fish. I asked why? He said you have to Release Wild Salmon in the Park. New Rule this year. Park did a poor job of letting people know. There is Boundary on the upper end of Richwine. Kind of hard to see.

From there it went downhill. Lots of Wild fish kept. Some guys cut the Head & Tail off so you couldn't tell. Some caught fish and filleted them immediately. Some didn't care and just put them in their Rigs. Some took 6+ Wild fish. Lots of people pulled them onto the bar. 5-10 ft out of the water, didn't have pliers, struggled to get the hook out, then kicked the fish back across the bar and into the water.

There were people who obeyed the rules. It was a 50/50 mix at best. No enforcement.

I wasnup there saturday as well. Where were younat? I was up on the upper end of richwine and cfrom what I saw everyone was following the rules.

Last time I checked it's your responsibility to know the rules of where you're fishing.

fish4brains

You're right. The rules had been the same for years. I got complacent. If I fish a river in the Park I'm not familiar with I check. In this case they had been the same for years. Always followed the State's lead. They now have a different philosophy.

Richwine bar is the butthole of the OP, right up there with Calawah Ponds in the summer and the shuwah hole on the duc. The people that go there typically won't give a crap about any rule and that includes snagging. Not trying to throw everyone under the bus, but the majority is pretty ignorant there.

I agree there are alotmof people that go there thatndo not care. But there are some that fish there that take the time to teach peolle that are snagging how to get the fish to actually hit your offering. I saw it this last weekend a guy snagged a few fish and let them go, there was a older guy and myself went to the guy and found out this was only his second or third time fishing for salmon ever. So we showed him how to do it properly and soon enough we had him catching fish that nailed his gear. Pretty cool. Imwill admit that the show up there can get out of hand sometimes. Thats ome of the reasons that I am in the market for a drift boat actually. Pretty nervous about it since ive never rowed down a river myself before, normally my dad rows

In my view it has steadily gotten worse over the last 10+ years. A few years back I was there one day fishing next to some of the old time locals on a day with only a few people there. They were talking about the lack of ethics and common courtesy they were seeing more and more. And it is on the other rivers over there as well. Garbage, snagging, jumping into someones spot when they are netting a fish for someone. Crap like that. It sucks.

When I started going over years ago I made it a point to be nice, courteous and caring.

Thank you for that Blu, some of us appreciate that & have been doing so for many years as well.

Well, when you don't raise your kids to respect, they will act like idiots.
When you let anyone into the country without teaching them the rules and they don't speak English, you get Russian snaggers, the Snohomish is full of them, as well as most other rivers.

I was there on Thursday and saw it differently- probably due to less pressure. I kept thinking though, as I released wild fish, did the nets release them the day before, and why isn't the state requiring release of wild fish one half mile upriver? Not a well integrated regulation in my opinion.

retriever

I talked to both WDFW and the Park Biologist. It boils down to they have different views. Park service believes all Wild Salmon, Stealhead etc should be released.

I did find on a Park website where they were looking for input on the new rule back in January-February. It looks like it got 0 comment